Bunner heard his ragged breathing turn to a groan of terror. She opened her eyes and looked through him. Through the wall, he thought, over the parking lot, and God only knew what she saw; not him, not this office, but then she told him. She saw Ken Nevins’s mother.
“She has blond hair—I think it’s dyed. She’s sick. Been sick a long time, only gets out of bed now to shower and use the toilet... and dye her hair. She smokes.
“They can’t leave her alone, but his daddy’s got to go someplace, don’t know where, and he wants to take his older brother, but not the younger boy. He’s got to stay home with her. Sit with her in the fusty bedroom while she smokes and reads or watches TV. He can’t go outside to play, or listen to the radio, or watch any of the things he wants to on TV. It’s spring, like it is now. Like it was when he slashed his arms open last year. The window’s only open a crack because she can’t stand drafts. Not enough to clear the air, only enough so he can hear the other kids out in the yards playing and laughing because they feel great because it’s getting warm and school’ll be over soon. He wants to be out there with them. Longs to be. But he has to stay here with her, while she smokes and reads and stares into space. She has on a thing... it’s a negligee, but he doesn’t know the right word for it—calls it a robe. It’s light blue and filmy, made of nylon.
“Oh, God...” she cried, “oh... my God—”
She bowed her head so suddenly her neck bones crackled, then it was totally silent. He didn’t know how long it went on; he couldn’t move his head to look at Dave or the clock. Couldn’t bring himself to pick up his pencil to fiddle with to pass the time or to move his lips to say anything. He just sat there, staring at the top of the nameless woman’s head. Her hair was short and reddish brown, curly, with the part making a pale line across her scalp.
Then she looked up at him and said, “Get him to show you his hands, Doctor, the palms of his hands. Then he’ll tell you.”
“You tell me,” Bunner cried. His voice sounded like he’d been crying for a week. He cleared his throat hard.
“It’s not up to me. Besides, he’s the one who’s got to remember what happened, not me. I don’t want to die. He does-”
Bunner looked back at the silhouettes in the car, Latovsky in front, the woman in back. Latovsky had turned around and slung his arm across the back to say something to her.
Bunner wondered what it was, what anyone could have to say to her, how his old friend even had the guts to sit in the same car with her. And there was a husband—talk about profiles in courage—some amazingly gutsy fool had actually married her!
He turned back and rang the bell. It chimed inside, then he heard footsteps, inhaled, held it, and the door opened. It wasn’t Ken, but his wife, Jenny.
She’d come to the office a few times to pick up Ken on days when she’d needed Ken’s car and Bunner had met her then. She was a lanky woman, a few inches taller than Ken, almost as tall as Bunner (but still a good head shorter than Dave) and she had a long bony face with large, androgynous features. She’d look like a man with the right haircut, except for her large gray eyes, which were lovely and feminine.
She raised her heavy straight eyebrows when she saw him, but in surprise, not alarm. She wasn’t afraid he was bringing bad news about her husband, so he must be home.
“Dr. Bunner, this is a surprise.”
“Hello, Jenny. Is Ken home?”
“Why, yes. Watching the game. Don’t ask me which game.” She smiled. Her eyes really were magnificent. He hoped the two girls, whom he’d never seen, had inherited those eyes, along with Ken’s fine features and smooth skin.
“I guess it must be important for you to come here on a Saturday morning,” she said doubtfully.
“It is to me. Is there a problem?”
“Only that Saturday morning’s his quiet time. I keep the kids out of his way, don’t make him go to the dry cleaners or mow the lawn or any of that garbage until afternoon. And he sort of prizes these few hours.”
He could hardly say, I’m here because a woman who looks like an unemployed nanny (except for jewelry worth about thirty thousand dollars) claims to be psychic and told me he’s on the verge of another suicide attempt, and I’ve got to look at the palms of his hands.
He didn’t know what to say, so he kept quiet.
She looked at him a moment, then opened the door all the way. As he passed into the small foyer, which had fresh flowers on a table against the wall, she looked past him out the door.
“Are they with you?” she asked, nodding toward his Caddy at the curb.
“Yes.”
“Do they want to come in?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I won’t keep them—or Ken—long.”
He was sure he wouldn’t, because he didn’t believe the exhausted-looking woman who claimed to be psychic. Glenvale was larger than the towns in the Park, but still not very big. Half the people in it knew about Ken’s attempted suicide; it wasn’t such a stretch from that to her figuring he was a patient of Bunner’s since Terence Bunner was the only M.D. shrink for adults between Glenvale and Malone.
Dave said she had never been up here before, but he had only her word on that. So she could’ve heard about Ken and put the rest together with a combination of luck and savvy.
“Let me just tell Ken,” said Jenny Nevins. “Don’t want to just spring you on him.”
She closed the door, led him into a small sitting room with comfortable-looking chintz furniture and a tiny fireplace stuffed full of a shining black woodstove. “I’ll just be a second,” she said, and left him alone.
She was back quickly, motioning to him from the doorway.
“He’s downstairs. We finished the basement a few years ago”—she led him deeper into the house—“and it looks okay, but it’s still got a chill to it, no matter what the weather. But he likes it down there. Maybe because it’s quiet and he can be alone.” Then she must’ve seen the look Bunner shot at the door they were approaching, and she dropped her voice. “He didn’t do it down there, Dr. Bunner. It’s carpeted and that’d make it hard to clean.” There was a flash of tears in her eyes. “He did it in the bathroom, where it’s tiled. He’s the most considerate man on earth.”
Slashing your arms open in a tiled bathroom to keep from spoiling the rug in the finished basement was a whole new definition of considerate, Bunner thought. He wondered if the woman waiting with Dave out in the car had seen Ken use that mat knife. Another mark of deadly (accent on deadly) seriousness, using a mat knife instead of a razor blade.
But she hadn’t seen anything, he told himself firmly. He was here because he was thorough and conscientious, not because he believed the woman in the torn slacks had seen anything in his office half an hour ago except the gaily colored drapes that needed cleaning.
They stopped at the door, and Jenny Nevins gave a crooked, mannish-looking grin and said, “Don’t keep him too long. He loves his bit of solitude.” Then she opened the door and said in a louder voice, “Can I get you some tea or coffee or a soft drink?”
He shook his head, said, “Thank you,” then descended into the Nevinses’ finished basement.
Chill came up the stairs to greet him; the steps and floor were carpeted, the cement or other foundation material was covered with good tongue-in-groove paneling, but it still felt like a basement, with windows high in the walls letting in thin streams of grayish light.